New, Low-cost Software Can Soup Up A Tired Old Printer

So you lust for one of the new dual-mode dot-matrix printers that can turn out spiffy near-letter-quality copy, but can't afford to trade in the primitive antique that has served you for so long?

Be of good cheer, for there's a low-cost alternative: software that turns some older dot-matrix printers into a reasonable approximation of a letter- quality printer -- provided the printer has a graphics generator. Three programs of this kind running on my Zenith Z-150 IBM PC-compatible computer have given satisfactory results on my aging Epson MX-80.

As do its competitors, Lettrix ''sculpts'' printed characters by causing the tiny pins in the printer's head to strike the paper repeatedly in a pattern tighter and denser than that of the ordinary dot-matrix mode. This slows the printer considerably.

But the result is any of 20 typefaces, plus the ability to print Greek, Cyrillic and even Hebrew. You can print scientific notations as well as subscripts and superscripts for term papers, and you also get proportional spacing that makes the print look more typeset. You can even design your own faces. Versatility is Lettrix's biggest advantage, as is ease of use: it's loaded into memory at the beginning of a computing session, and you can shift between type faces readily.

Its drawbacks are minor. To my subjective eye the print quality, while head and shoulders above dot matrix, is handsome but a bit angular, at least in the Courier type face. The tails of the letters ''g'' and ''y'' seem oddly undersized in the print the Epson produces. And the program is copy protected, an annoyance for many users.

The second program, Bradford, is marketed by Concom Enterprises, 2626 W. Touhy, Chicago, Ill. 60645. It's for IBMs and compatibles or Kaypro computers, and works with these printers: IBM graphics; Epson MX with Graftrax, FX and RX; Gemini 10, 10x, 15 and 15x.

At $39.95 Bradford is a honest bargain, though much less versatile than Lettrix. It has just five type faces and does not run invisibly in memory, as Lettrix does; you must exit your word processor to call up Bradford. Once that is done, however, Bradford is easy to use, for it is ''menu'' driven; there are few commands to remember.

Bradford is almost painfully slow on my Zenith-and-Epson combination. It printed that 3,840-byte file in 13 minutes 10 seconds, or about 5 characters per second. (To be sure, Bradford will work more rapidly with faster printers; the Epson MX-80 is no speed demon.) Bradford is slow partly because in normal use it puts down a denser dot pattern than the other programs, and this results in print that seems darker and crisper.

Bradford could be the choice for those who want a clean, attractive master to be reproduced with an electronic copier. It has other features: proportional spacing, continuous underlining, margin adjustment, wide or narrow characters, and more. It works exceptionally well with WordStar- produced files. And it is not copy protected; you can put the program on the same disc with your favorite word processor and avoid disc swapping.

Its manufacturer says it is working to improve the speed of the program (the newest version is claimed to be a bit faster than the one I tested) as well as to support more printers and computers.

The third software of this nature is simple, with few features, but is free: It's a public domain program for IBMs and compatibles called LQ-Print, written only for the Epson MX and IBM Graphics printers. Where to find it? Most user groups devoted to the IBM Personal Computer and clones will have it, and any respectable IBM-oriented electronic bulletin board should also have it for the ''downloading'' over the phone via modem.

LQ-Print boasts only two fonts -- ordinary dot matrix in several modes and a single near-letter-quality face -- but the quality of its print is excellent. It works the same way Bradford does; you essentially exit the word processor and call up a menu of commands. Among its few but important features are microjustification and proportional spacing.

The program can be called up from within WordStar, making it exceptionally handy to use with that word processor. And because it's so simple, it's comparatively fast: It printed that 3,840-byte file in 5 minutes 20 seconds, or 12 characters per second.

If you can't find LQ-Print, a fancier, more powerful commercial version (which I haven't seen) is available for $25 from its designer, Centar Technology, Box 60577, Sunnyvale, Calif. 94088.

Readers are invited to send questions to Henry Kisor in care of The Orlando Sentinel, P.O. Box 1100, Orlando, Fla. 32802-1100. Letters cannot be answered personally but questions of general interest will be answered in this column.